Father ted quip earns a few euro more at the mart

Supply and demand is a fundamental concept of economics and relevant for farmers. An increase in demand combined with a shortage of supply results in an increased price for the commodity or product in question.

This in mind, we took a small number of heifers to a local mart to take advantage of the current demand for store heifers. The difference between this trip and our last was that the cheque book was left at home to ensure no impulse purchases.

Attending a mart that best suits your stock is vital and can have a huge bearing on the final price. Of course, without the right personnel in attendance, the price a farmer receives may also suffer.

The part-time nature of our enterprise results in mart attendance being a tricky task to organise. Luckily, there are two of us involved in buying and selling cattle at home. However, some part-time farmers aren’t as lucky and the buying and selling is left to one person, who in some cases is also juggling a full-time job.

We had to leave an animal or two behind at home due to an out of date TB test. These animals will be tested with the rest of the herd in the coming weeks and their fate will be decided thereafter.

On arrival, the cattle were left in their designated pen until the time of sale. As is the case in marts, our pen of cattle had a few admirers.

This leaves ample opportunity to blend in with these window shoppers and give the impression I have no connection with the animals, giving me a chance to influence their opinion.

Farmers often comment on the rear of the animal as the more expensive cuts, such as the fillet, are from the back half of the animal. One farmer who was giving our heifers ‘the eye’ passed a comment regarding the back end of a heifer in our pen.

I used a Father Ted reference to draw his attention to the other heifers, “but of course, they all have lovely bottoms”.

At the mart the demand was good with numbers not overly strong. Prices for other store cattle and strong with good quality stock was achieving €2.50/kg. This gave us confidence before our cattle entered the ring.

Our cattle entered the ring, on average they weighed 500kg, this was lighter than expected. We were happy with the outcome – as a group they achieved €2.57/kg.

This was above our target sale price of €.50/kg so we were happy with the outcome.

Personally I think it was the Father Ted quote that got them their extra few quid, but this seems to be only my opinion.